"Aaron Wolfe - Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Aaron)

"That's some son you've raised," I said.

"You've raised him too."

"I don't take credit where it isn't due," I said.

After all, I had been in the army for two years, eighteen long months in
Southeast Asia. And after that, for more than two years, there had been
that gray-walled 'hospital room where Toby had been allowed to visit only
twice, and after that I'd spent another eight months in a private
sanitariumтАж

"Don't be so hard on yourself," she said. She leaned her head against
my shoulder. Her pale hair spilled like a fan of golden feathers across my
chest. I could feel the pulse throbbing in her temple.

We stayed like that for a while: working at our drinks and watching the
fire and not saying anything at all. When I first got out of the hospital, we
didn't talk much because neither of us knew quite what to say. I felt
terribly guilty about having withdrawn from them and from my
responsibilities to them that I was embarrassed about suddenly moving in
as an equal member of the family. She hadn't known what to say, for she
had been desperately afraid of saying something, anything, that might
send me back into my quasicatatonic trance. Hesitantly, fumblingly, we
had eventually found our way back to each other. And then there was a
time when we could say whatever we chose, a time in which we talked too
much and made up for lost yearsтАФor perhaps we were afraid that if we
didn't say it all now, share it now, immediately, we would have no chance
to say it in the future. In the last two months we had settled into a third
stage in which we were again sure of each other, as we had been before I
went away to war and came back not myself. We didn't feel, as we had,
that it was necessary for us to jabber at each other in order to stave off the
silences. We were comfortable with long pauses, reveriesтАж So: the fire, the
drinks, her hair, her quick heartbeat, her hand curling in mine.

And then for no apparent reasonтАФexcept, perhaps, that it was all too
good; I was still frightened of things being too good and therefore having
nowhere to go but down againтАФI thought of the odd tracks in the snow. I
told her about them, but with detachment, as if I were talking about
something I had read in a magazine.

She said, "What do you think made them?"

"I haven't any idea."

"Maybe you could find it in one of those books in the den. A drawing or
photograph just like what you saw."

"I hadn't thought of that," I said. "Ill check it out after dinner." The den
was furnished with a shelf of books on woodlore, hunting, rifle care and